If you've ever followed James Franco's career, then you know his acting choices has made him a significant ally to the LGBT community. The actor, who has been doing a lot of experimental projects as of late (such as his stint on the ABC soap General Hospital to The Broken Tower, his directorial debut about gay poet Hart Crane) is set to star in a remake of the controversial Al Pacino film Cruising.
The movie, which came out in 1980 sent an uproar throughout the gay community over the film's plot revolving around a serial killer who would pick up gay men and then murder them after having sex with them. Pacino played a cop who goes undercover in the underground gay S&M world to stop the killer.
The original was directed by William Friedkin (The Exorcist) and the remake will be helmed by Travis Matthews, who directed the sexually explicit indie, I Want Your Love.
Here's where it gets a bit strange. Cruising will not be an exact remake. Instead Franco and Matthews will make an art project of the 40 minutes of footage cut from the film and was apparently destroyed. Apparently for a 30th anniversary DVD Friedkin wanted to restore the footage cut from the movie to secure an R rating. When he went to get to work on the project, he was told that the footage was destroyed.
Check out an interview with Matthews with Heath Daniels over at The Advocate below...
The Advocate: James Franco’s Cruising is inspired by the controversial 1980 Al Pacino movie, Cruising. What exactly does “inspired” mean in this instance?
Travis Mathews: We are reimagining 40 minutes of footage that was cut from Cruising. The footage was lost after [Cruising director] William Friedkin had to cut it out to secure an R rating. When he went back to put it in for the 30th anniversary [DVD release] he was told it had been destroyed. That was where we started. But James Franco’s Cruising is primarily about the making of the 40 minutes of film that was eventually lost. No one will confuse it for a remake.
Is it correct to assume Franco is playing himself in the movie? Who is playing Al Pacino?
Franco is playing himself. I’m playing myself. Val Lauren gives an amazing performance as … I hesitate to say he’s playing Pacino because it’s more than that, but the short answer is yes, he’s interpreting that character and doing something all his own.
Which scenes in Cruising inspired you the most?
The bar scenes. If you edit all of those scenes back-to-back and eliminate the other dramatic elements in the film, it’s a nonjudgmental snapshot of a particular gay New York subculture in 1980. It’s part of what makes the controversy [about the S/M bar scenes] so fascinating from my 2012 perspective. As a whole it’s problematic, but in isolation I think those bar scenes are actually an important document that’s never given much credit.
I saw Cruising for the first time a few years ago and while it came out before my time, I can understand people's gripe with the movie. My only issue is that with the controversy surrounding this film as being a negative portrayal of the gay community, is this the right project for Franco to be taking on? Another question to ask with the AIDS holocaust that wiped out most of the gays who may remember the drama that surrounded the film when it first came out, does the controversy of 1980 still hold up today? I actually liked the movie, and I'm curious to see what they do with the film and how raunchy they plan to get (I'm sure most of the 40 minutes cut had to be some of the sexually-charged stuff in the bars).
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